The Unraveling

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Overview

“A wildly inventive, funny, and ultimately quite heartfelt novel, The Unraveling is a chaotic romp of gender deconstruction packaged up in a groovy science-fictional coming-of-age tale.” —Chicago Review of Books

In a society where biotechnology has revolutionized gender, young Fift must decide whether to conform or carve a new path.

In the distant future, somewhere in the galaxy, a Staid-gendered youth with three bodies is just trying to figure life out. Fift is struggling to maintain zir position in Fullbelly’s rigid social system, which is only made more difficult as ze develops an intriguing—and controversial— friendship with the acclaimed Vail-gendered bioengineer Shria.

When Fift and Shria wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle that precipitates a multilayered Unraveling of society,.  Fift is torn between zir attraction to Shria and the safety of zir family, between staying true to zir feelings and social compliance . . . all while zir personal crises suddenly take on global  significance. What’s a young Staid to do when the whole world is watching?

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645660064
Publisher:	Erewhon Books
Publication date:	06/08/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	811,367
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Benjamin Rosenbaum has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. He is the author of the short story collection The Ant King and Other Stories and the Jewish historical fantasy tabletop role-playing game "Dream Apart", and the Jewish historical fantasy interactive fiction game The Ghost and the Golem, forthcoming from Choice of Games. He also co-hosts the podcast Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans. Originally from Arlington, VA, he lives near Basel, Switzerland, with his wife and children. He can be found online at www.benjaminrosenbaum.com

Editorial Reviews

02/01/2020

In Queen of Storms, the second in the "Firemane Saga," Hatushaly and young wife Hava restore the fire-blackened Three Stars in trade-rich Beran's Hill, but they aren't the cheerful innkeepers they appear to be (100,000-copy first printing). A young woman in small-town Queensland, Australia, undertakes a gothic journey after hearing from her long-gone brother, thus launching Hugo- and World Fantasy-nominated illustrator Jennings's buzzing debut novel, Flyaway. In The Relentless Moon, sequel to Kowal's Hugo, Locus, and Nebula-Award winning The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky, the moon is being colonized even as a meteor strike brings climate crisis to Earth. Originally scheduled for October 2019, Malerman's Malorie reveals what happens to the title character eight years after events in Bird Box, basis of the Netflix mega-hit. The perennial best-selling Modesitt's Quantum Shadows is set in a place called Heaven, where humankind's major religions each have their own land and places of worship are being scarily marked with inscrutable black images. With his stories already nominated for Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy honors, debut novelist Rosenbaum (The Ant King and Other Stories) returns with The Unraveling, which dreams up a far-future, distant-galaxy, rigidly structured society where individuals have multiple bodies and staid-gendered Fift and bail-gendered bioengineer Shria wind up in the midst of an eyebrow-raising art spectacle. Salvatore's Relentless closes his "Generations" trilogy with Zaknafein reunited with son Drizzt Do'Urden and reconciled to life's unpredictability (100,000-copy first printing). In multi-award-winning Walton's intriguing-sounding Or What You Will, a character who's been a dragon, lover, scholar, warrior, and thief in the many books penned by Sylvia Harrison knows that the 73-year-old author won't be around much longer and is trying to figure out how the two of them can escape into immortality. Born in England to South American parents and raised in Africa near the historical territory of his Xhosa ancestors, Winter draws on his background to light The Fires of Vengeance, second in "The Burning" series, wherein a queen who has lost her throne joins with a young warrior in a battle to regain it (75,000-copy first printing).

Library Journal

05/10/2021

With this ambitious first novel, Rosenbaum (The Ant King and Other Stories) immerses readers in a complex and utterly alien far-future sci-fi world populated by multibodied, cybernetically enhanced humans. Young protagonists Fift, who uses the pronouns ze/zir, and Shria, who uses the pronouns ve/vir, feel constrained by their society’s rigid gender system, enforced through a social capital–based economy and a system of global surveillance. When the pair are involved in a riot sparked by a mysterious circus performance, Fift must choose: disavow zir friend, leaving Shria to face public censure alone, or speak up and risk destroying zir own family. As the consequences of this choice spiral outward, the pair become unwilling figureheads for a revolution. Embedded in a narrative frame about civilizational expansion and collapse, Rosenbaum’s story offers a complex meditation on fame, taboo, gender, and social control. Dense, inventive worldbuilding coupled with the use of neopronouns will present some readers with a steep learning curve, but it’s tempered by the competent plotting and deeply human emotional core. Readers of secondary-world science fiction and science fantasy will find this to be as mind-bending as it is satisfying. Agent: John Silbersack, the Bent Agency. (June)

Publishers Weekly

★ “This beautifully written debut is a thorough, well-realized picture of a world with a radically different concept of gender and the body that nonetheless has its own forms of oppression. Rosenbaum's novel is essential reading for anyone interested not only in speculative fiction that plays with gender norms, but also in quality SF in general. Highly recommended.” —Booklist, starred review

“[A] complex meditation on fame, taboo, gender, and social control . . . as mind-bending as it is satisfying.”—Publishers Weekly

An immersive future history, The Unraveling is a fantastic adventure that is also a story about the love that binds us to each other—and to the galaxy itself. Rosenbaum’s writing is wonderfully complex and whimsical, but most of all it is humane. No matter how alien his characters and worlds, they feel like kin.” —Annalee Newitz, Hugo and Lambda Award-winning author of Autonomous

"I hope a ton of people read this book, think about it, and talk about it, as this is the book that could launch a hundred think pieces and a thousand imitators . . . I truly feel like The Unraveling is a reinvention of new directions stories can go when playing with science fiction’s favorite questions: What If? Why Not?" —Little Red Reviewer

 “The wonders of this novel are best revealed by reading it. . . .I was surprised again and again.” —Rich Horton, editor of Locus

Praise for The Ant King and Other Stories:
"Give him some prizes, like, perhaps, "best first collection" for this book." —Booklist (Starred review, Top 10 SF Books of the Year)

"Featuring outlandish and striking imagery throughout . . . this collection is a surrealistic wonderland." —Publishers Weekly

"Urbane without being arch, sweet without being maudlin, mysterious without being cryptic."—Cory Doctorow, author of Boing Boing

"Lively, bizarre, and funny as well as dark, sinister, and sensual." —Boston Phoenix

"Contains invisible cities and playful deconstructions of the form. In "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, With Air-Planes,' by Benjamin Rosenbaum"—yes, his name is part of the title—the author imagines a world whose technologies and philosophies differ wildly from ours. The result is a commentary on the state of the art that is itself the state of the art." —Los Angeles Times (Favorite Books of 2008)

From the Publisher